﻿ We've been talking about how to get your prayers answered and what to pray for. One thing we have to keep in mind is there are ten commandments, and we must work hard at following them to a tee. God gave us tools, one of the things we can do is pray, when we fall short of a commandment, we can ask to be forgiven. But, we cannot base our life on that. We cannot go around saying, it's ok to sin because we will be forgiven. Fact is, we are not above the laws of God. So something that happens causing us to stumble, is called temptation. We're going to take some wise words and truth from James chapter 1; Starting with verse 2 my brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into diverse temptations; verse 3, knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. Verse 4 says, but let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be made perfect and entire, wanting nothing. So what we see here is, with patience we can overcome temptation, and also, when we do overcome, the patience in us becomes perfect and entire, wanting nothing. Now if you skip down to verse 12, it goes right along with saying blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love Him. To me that sounds like a very special gift from a father that loves his children on this planet. The crown of life. What would you do with eternity? This next four verses 13 - 16, has something very important to say. Now I want you to pay extra special attention to this. The Holy Spirit has worked through me for many years telling this message to everyone I know. And here it goes: verse 13, let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man; verse 14, but every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Verse 15, then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth fourth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. And James here showing great love for his brethren and man kind, as did his teacher, Jesus Christ, in verse 16, he stated, do not err (or error) my beloved brethren. The scriptures were quoted from King James Bible. I've got to tell you , it's not as easy as it sounds. There are so may things in our world today, of a tempting nature. Some examples: some of us are envious of movie stars, musicians, and others around us. Here is what some scripture says about being envious, it's also one of the ten commandments, to not covet. I'll give you one scripture and you'll have to look up the rest. For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work and this is in James 3:16. Now, these other scriptures are important, you should look them up and read them. Here we go; Deut. 5:21, James 4:5, Galatians 5:26, Psalm 10:3. Proverbs 3:31 &14:30 & 27:4, I Cor. 10:24, Psalm 37:7, Eccl. 4:4, Proverbs 24:1, James 3:14, Proverbs 23:17-18, and finally Luke 12:22-23. We can see here in just one way how hard life can be with temptation all over the place. Another form of temptation is being tempted to fear. This is one of the bigger ones, and I'll tell you why, because it means you have little faith or lack thereof. Mark 4:40 says, and he said unto them, why are ye so fearful. How is it that ye have no faith? Jesus spoke those words and if you look up the scripture, it's in red letters, meaning spoken by Jesus. Here's scriptures on fear; Luke 12:32, Isaiah 41:13, Matthew 10:28, II Timothy 1:7, I Peter 3:12-14, Proverbs 29:25, John 14:27, Psalm 23:4-5. We'll talk more about temptation another time. - The Connection -Holy Spirit from within giver of my spiritual gifts,guiding me with my pen in hand allowing your words to come from my lips. My mind is filled with loving thoughts my heart pounds with excitement, your loving wisdom never stops desiring to get the message sent. J D Poore

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I chose poetry because it's an easy way to express myself in words. It's a way of relaxing for me. I also like to study words by going back to the original meaning of the word. Since I'm inspired to write about salvation I do a lot of studying. This led to the Heavenly Reflections page on our website. There are lots of pictures taken by my lovely wife and website partner. We both love nature and we hope you enjoy the pictures of our Fathers creation. With lots of prayer and faith, and by the Holy Spirit of God together we have overcome many obstacles. We want to share with everyone so that we might be ahelp in times of trouble. We hope to share with the world the joy that we have found in working for our Father, and the salvation we have because Jesus died for us. God Bless you and yours.J D Poore